


It's Not So Bad

by thedisturberofthepeace2 (thedisturberofthepeace)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-10 16:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1162008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedisturberofthepeace/pseuds/thedisturberofthepeace2
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A short piece I wrote after I found out about this ad: http://gizmodo.com/this-ad-has-a-secret-anti-abuse-message-that-only-kids-493108460</p>
<p>An abused child gets her chance at a happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not So Bad

**Author's Note:**

> This is purely fiction, just happens to be inspired by a real ad/movement.

It wasn’t that bad. Not really. It’s just that sometimes Daddy would hold my hand too tight, or get mad if I did something really bad like spill his drinks or forget to clean the house. It’s always my fault though; I’m supposed to follow the rules. So really it’s not so bad. My ears hurt from him screaming in them and my hands sting when you poke the purple bits, but I deserved it.

My daddy didn’t like it when I looked at anyone, especially him. He said I wasn’t pretty enough to look at people and I knew he was right because whenever I would peek up at the people passing by, they would always mush their faces up like I do when Daddy makes me take me sleeping medicine. Sometimes Daddy would catch me looking at the people in the mall and that’s when he would squeeze my hand and pull quicker.

Daddy works at the Sears in the mall as a mechanic for the car shop. That’s where he takes me on the weekend and the days when school is cancelled. Those days I have to be extra quiet so I don’t embarrass Daddy in front of his friends. Daddy used to have to hit me a lot when we got back to the house from his work because I was always a bad girl. In the beginning, Daddy’s friends would come to the corner Daddy told me to stay in and smile at me and tell me jokes and Daddy would get mad because I’m not supposed to laugh.

It’s not so hard anymore because I learned that if you stay quiet long enough, they’ll leave you alone, but today the funniest man brought two puppets, a pretty horse with a horn on his head and a girl with a sparkly dress, and he made them talk to each other in front of me. I tried really hard not to smile, but the man must have seen it, because when he was finished, he asked if I wanted to keep the puppets. I shook my head to tell him no, but he just smiled and left them next to me when he got up to go back to work.

After he was gone, I picked them up carefully to see if they would talk to me, too. The horse stung a little as I put it over my hand like the man did, but the girl didn’t hurt as much. I made them talk in my head. It wasn’t a very good story like the man’s, but I still smiled as they jumped and danced together.

I must have forgot the time, because it didn’t seem like very long before the door to the break office slammed open and shut and my daddy came through. He glared at the puppets in my hand and I rushed to put them in my pocket, but I could tell that he was already mad at me. “We’re leaving.”

Daddy pulled my arm harder today. I had to blink a lot to stop crying because of how scared I was. He rushed me out of the mall faster than he had in months, but a friend of his that was on his way to work stopped us and talked to Daddy for a while. He tried to look at me, too, smiling just like the rest and I turned my head to the side so he couldn’t see how ugly I was.

The poster next to me caught my eye. It was a boy my age. He looked like the boys in my class, but his cheek was red and puffy and his lip was bleeding. I looked over at Daddy to see if he saw, too, but he was still talking to his friend. This time when I turned back, I read the words next to his cheek. “If somebody hurts you, phone us and we’ll help you” My eyebrows scrunched up a bit. Why would somebody hurt that boy? He wasn’t ugly like me. Maybe they only helped the pretty kids that got hurt. It confused me, but I memorized the numbers on the right, “116 111”, so that I could call and ask them questions maybe. Just as I finished memorizing the number, Daddy started pulling me out of the mall again.

 

That night I sat in the bathroom, the water running, Daddy’s phone on the sink counter, and a wad of wet tissues pressed onto my eye. I hurt everywhere. My thigh ached from where Daddy had shoved his hand into my pocket and ripped out the puppets. Tears came out of my eyes again when I thought of how he had cut the stuffing out with his pocket knife and punched me when I tried to stop him. I don’t remember much after that.

When I woke up, I was curled up behind the couch. Daddy must have still been hitting me after I fainted, because I could feel a lot of bruises that I don’t remember getting, but he was snoring on the couch now, a bottle in his fist. I stood up, ignoring the hiss from my ankle, and made my way to the bathroom. Without thinking, I grabbed Daddy’s phone and locked myself in the bathroom.

By the time I had stopped the bleeding from the cuts, I had stopped crying, too. I just sat there for a while, just trying to get some air back in, it took me a minute to realize the phone was in my hand now and I was staring at it. Would they even help me if I called? What if they said I wasn’t pretty enough? What if people like Daddy are supposed to hurt bad kids like me?

I stood up and looked at myself in the mirror. I had the same cuts and bruises like that boy right? My face was a little more covered in grey and a little more dirty, but maybe that would hide the fact that I was ugly, I thought hopefully.

I fought with myself like that for hours, wondering what I should do; all the while I was typing in the numbers and deleting them over and over again. It wasn’t until I could here birds chirping and cars driving past that I typed the numbers in and pressed the call button. A swirl of doubt and fear rushed into my head and I felt a bit dizzy as I fought not to hang up.

There was a click as the phone was picked up on the other end and I held my breath, waiting for them to start yelling. The soft voice that came through surprised me.

“Hello?”

She was very quiet and she didn’t seem mad at all.

“Is everything alright, sweetheart? You can tell me if you need help.” She sounded worried, but I couldn’t answer her. My voice was still stuck in my through like peanut butter does.

She waited a minute before she started telling a story. She didn’t pause to wait for me to answer anymore, she just kept telling this story about a little girl who followed a rabbit to another place and how she talked to flowers and animals and saved the day with a funny man in a hat. I could almost see her smile through the phone, and by the end I was smiling, too. She ended the story with “and she lived happily ever after”. I wrung my hands on my shirt and took a deep breath.

“Me, too?”

I could hear a muffled hum from the other side.

“Yes, sweetheart, you will have a happy ending, too.”


End file.
